While it is not the purpose of this book to study the political organization of the empire, which others have done in some detail, it may be useful to go over the juridical structure of the colonial administration that was constructed in the 16th century. A description of this legislation is opportune here because, like navigation, cartography, or natural history, political administration and commercial organization were technical challenges that shared the same aim of proclaiming dominion and control. The following section presents a general panorama of the normative and institutional development that took place in Spain for that aim.

The ‘Capitulations de Santa Fe’, the agreement signed between Columbus and the Catholic Monarchs in 1492, granted him the title of viceroy, but the Crown could not imagine the implication this agreement would have. After he returned, the first regulation for the administration of the Indies was the ‘[i]nstruction of our lords the king and queen for don Cristóbal Colón’, signed by the monarchs in Barcelona in May 1493. That ‘instruction’ already gave one a glimpse of the magnitude of the Spanish Crown's aims in the New World. On the one hand, it insisted on the importance of converting the indigenous people to the Catholic faith and, on the other, it was obvious that the New World was seen as a new field for commercial development.

The admiral himself was granted the powers of viceroy and governor of the Indies and, as such, was made responsible for their administration and the appointment of judges (alcaldes) and sheriffs (alguaciles) who would be in charge of civil and criminal justice.